The UCLA softball team is hitting the road for the NCAA Super Regionals for the first time since 2016. It’s unfamiliar for the Bruins, but they’re not lamenting the situation brought about by their No. 9 seeding.
“If you get a group of athletes that are committed to just wanting to win so badly, then whatever the road map is, whoever we play – everything else is just outside noise,” head coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said.
UCLA (52-10) will travel to Columbia, South Carolina, to play eighth-seeded South Carolina (43-15) in a best-of-three series that begins at 10 a.m. PT Friday. Game 2 is slated for 10 a.m. Saturday. If necessary, Game 3 will take place Sunday at a time to be be decided.
It’s the Bruins’ 15th appearance in a Super Regional.
If the Bruins win the series, they will travel straight from Columbia to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series. It’s an intense travel arrangement, but their inaugural Big Ten Conference season has prepared them well for cross-country trips.
“Just pack everything, literally,” UCLA pitcher Kaitlyn Terry said. “It’s good that we’ve traveled kind of far this year. Just for things like this that we’re ready and know what to pack and what to bring and not stress about it too much.”
UCLA is 12-1 all-time against South Carolina, which finished seventh overall in the SEC Conference standings.
The SEC has dominated softball this season since the disbandment of the Pac-12 Conference – the winningest conference in college softball. Eight out of 10 teams in the final RPI rankings were from the SEC.
“They have more teams at the end of the day, and therefore like their RPI is higher,” Inouye-Perez said. “Their losses can be more valuable than a win. And those are things that are part of the formula that I don’t necessarily agree with, but it’s facts and we got to reap the benefit of that when we were in the Pac.”
UCLA bounced back from a 2-0 loss to Michigan in the Big Ten championship game with three dominant wins in the NCAA Regional. None of the games surpassed six innings.
Alexis “Lefty” Ramirez went a career-best 3 for 4 with five RBI in the final 12-1 win over UC Santa Barbara and three additional home runs came courtesy of USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year finalists Jordan Woolery and Megan Grant as well as leadoff hitter Jessica Clements.
@haleymsawyerUCLA softball player Jordan Woolery sends a ball to deep center field off of pitcher Taylor Tinsley, who happens to be her roommate, during active BP. #sports #sportsreporter #softball #collegesoftball #bp #batting #battingpractice
♬ original sound – Haley Sawyer
The Bruins collectively hit for a season-best 1.297 OPS in the regionals and set a record for run differential in an NCAA Regional by outscoring their opponents 31-2 across three games.
“After the Big Ten tournament, we just came back together, regrouped,” Ramirez said. “Went back to just the fundamentals, just focusing on ourselves and what we can do and what we can control. We took that into this past weekend, just being focused on us and knowing that our plan is the best plan.”
The Bruins have a selection of aces in Taylor Tinsley, Kaitlyn Terry and Addison Fisher. All have thrown for at least 100 innings and the staff as a whole is fourth or better in three different categories: K/BB ration (4.39), WHIP (1.05) and strikeouts (439).
“We all get together, we always talk,” Terry said. “We all knew each other from club ball, so all of us coming in together was a good thing.”
The team as a whole is closely bonded, due in part to the cross-country travel that the Big Ten schedule brought. The Bruins spent their time at the airport studying and braiding each other’s hair and became so close that Inouye-Perez decided to keep them together in a hotel for the NCAA Regionals.
“We’ve been doing a lot of traveling all year, so we’re pretty accustomed to taking off for long trips,” Ramirez said. “But I think we’re just more excited just to get out there and play. Wherever we ended up or wherever we were gonna go, we were just excited to play.”
NCAA Super Regional Game 1: UCLA at South Carolina
When: 10 a.m. PT Friday
Where: Carolina Softball Stadium, Columbia, South Carolina
TV: ESPN2
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